Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment of a housing application. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an application.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained about the Council’s failure to provide suitable accommodation so that her son can have surgery. She says her current home is overcrowded and unsuitable and she needs a two-bedroom adapted bungalow but no suitable vacancies have been offered.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Miss X says she is living in unsuitable housing and needs to be moved to a suitable home urgently.
6. The Council told us that she has been in Band 2 with high medical needs since 2022 but has not made any bids on vacancies in the past 3 years. The Council operates a choice-based lettings system and if tenants wish to be transferred they need to bid on vacancies as they occur. The type of property Miss X wants is in limited supply and vacancies only occur occasionally.
7. Miss X is a secure council tenant and the Council does not have a duty to re-house her within a certain period of time. She is on the housing register and must bid on vacancies along with other applicants in her banding. There is no fault if a council has correctly prioritised an application and an applicant can challenge the priority under s.166A of the Housing Act 1996 if they wish to challenge it. However, asking for a review does not guarantee a higher priority and where vacancies for a particular type of housing are few it is acknowledged that it may take a long time before someone is re-housed.
8. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether someone disagrees with the decision the organisation made.
9. We may not find fault with a council’s assessment of a housing application/ a housing applicant’s priority if it has carried this out in line with its published allocations scheme. We recognise that the demand for social housing far outstrips the supply of properties in many areas

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment of a housing application. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an application.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman